About Us

American Indian Special Emphasis Program

“Halito” (Hello) to you all! Welcome to the NRCS – Louisiana American Indian Emphasis Program web page.

Special Emphasis Programs

Special Emphasis activities and support are an integral part of the Civil Rights Program of the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Special Emphasis Program Managers assist the Louisiana State Conservationist and the Leadership Team to:

Ensure that equal opportunity is present in all aspects of NRCS programs, services, and employment.
Provide advice and assistance in order to help meet civil rights program goals and objectives.
Ensure effective communication among all persons and areas dealing with or affected by, agency civil rights responsibilities.

The program seeks to:

Support the unique role of American Indians and Alaskan Natives within the Federal Government system.
Recruit potential American Indian/Alaskan Native employees.
Develop mentoring processes among American Indian/Alaskan Native employees.
Build coalitions with appropriate advocacy groups.

American Indian Special Emphasis Program Mission Statement

To provide focus on issues of employment, promotion, training, retention and career enhancement affecting American Indian/Alaskan Native employees and applicants in NRCS in Louisiana.

Strategic Issues

Support American Indian Special Emphasis Program efforts at state, regional, and national levels.
Develop a strong recruitment plan to enhance diversity within NRCS in Louisiana.

Goals

Assess the problems, needs, and opportunities critical to success;
Identify available resources;
Establish long range and annual goals consistent with the objectives of the program;
Develop and implement an annual plan of operations that identifies specific activities to be initiated and/or completed during the fiscal year;
Monitor and evaluate progress in completing activities and meeting established objectives;
Increase the total number of American Indians in all professional, administrative, technical, clerical, and other categories, series, and all grade levels;
Eliminate concentrations of American Indians in single interval series to diversify and create advancement opportunities;
Encourage the participation of American Indians in all NRCS sponsored programs and activities;
Provide a network of professional support for American Indians;
Ensure that the American Indians community receives equal treatment in all aspects of employment;
Provide opportunities to participate in training and training programs such as career enhancement, graduate studies, and others.

About the Program Manager
	E. John Rogers District Conservationist American Indian/Alaskan Native Emphasis Program Manager USDA-NRCS/Sabine SWCD 290 Pico Street Many, Louisiana 71449 Phone: 318-256-3491 Fax: 318-256-0689 Email: john.rogers@la.usda.gov

I am currently serving as the Native American Special Emphasis Program Manager for Louisiana and as a District Conservationist stationed at the Many Service Center in west Louisiana. I am a member of the United Houma Nation, a Louisiana state recognized tribe that is seeking federal recognition, located in Golden Meadow, Louisiana. My NRCS career started in 1978. During my career with NRCS I have worked in Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas. I am a member of the American Indian Alaska Native Employee Association (AINEA) for NRCS.

Louisiana American Indian Population and Tribes

Louisiana has the third largest American Indian population in the south behind North Carolina and Florida. The parish (county) that has the highest percentage of population of American Indian is Sabine Parish, while Terrebone Parish has the largest population.

The State of Louisiana has four Federally Recognized Tribes, The Chitimacha Tribe in 1925, and The Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana in 1971, The Jena Band of Choctaws in 1999, and the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana in 1981. The Chitimacha Tribe has a reservation in Charenton, the Coushatta Tribe in Elton, the Jena Band of Choctaws in Jena and the Tunica-Biloxi in Marksville.

The State of Louisiana has ten state recognized tribes, the Adai Caddo Tribe (1993), the Biloxi-Chitimacha Confederation of Muskogee (2004), the Choctaw-Apache Tribe (1978), the Clifton Choctaw (1978), the Four Winds Tribe (1997), the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band, the Isle de Jean Charles Band, The Louisiana Choctaw Tribe, the Point au Chien Tribe (2004), and the United Houma Nation (1972).

Louisiana has seven other tribes which are not state or federal recognized. They are Avogel Tribe of Louisiana, Avoyel-Taensa Tribe, the Atakapa-Ishak Nation, the Chahta Tribe, the Louisiana Choctaw Turtle Tribe, the Lacombe Choctaws, and the Talimali Band Apalachee of Louisiana.

Other American Indian associations are the Louisiana Intertribal Council, Louisiana Indian Education Association, and the Louisiana Indian Heritage Association.

November is American Indian Heritage Month

2009 Poster

Click on image for full screen version in PDF format which requires Acrobat Reader.

2009 American Indian Heritage Month Poster (PDF; 422 KB)

In 1986, President Reagan designated November 23-30 as American Indian Week. Four years later, President Bush proclaimed the first National American Indian Heritage Month. Each year since, U.S. Presidents have proclaimed November as American Indian Heritage Month.

The NRCS recognizes and celebrates the many different cultures of the American Indians. November has been designated as American Indian Heritage Month. This provides an opportunity to make people aware of the history of American Indians and their contributions to the world.

One of the ways NRCS nationally celebrates American Indian Heritage Month is by distributing a poster created by an American Indian artist. Each year artists from selected states have the opportunity to exhibit his/her talents and heritage on a national level. For 2009, the West Region was chosen to produce the poster; with NRCS Alaska the lead state to oversee the poster contest.

This year Natural Resources Conservation Service chose artwork by Andrew Abyo for the NRCS 2009 American Indian/Alaska Native Heritage Month Poster. Andrew Abyo born in Anchorage, Alaska and raised in the Bristol Bay village of Pilot Point, Andrew Abyo is an Aleut/Alutiiq artist and carver who seeks to learn and pass on his cultural traditions. Andrew wants everyone, especially his four children, to have a greater understanding of the Alutiiq culture and its rich history. "My goal is to bring out different things that you normally don’t get to see, other than in a museum.”

The poster theme for this year’s poster is entitled Our Land, Our Animals, Our People, We Are One. Andrew Abyo titled his artwork, “We Are All Connected,” depicts the relationship between land, animals, and people. Abyo described his piece this way: “We are connected to land and animals. We are connected by touch and feel in spirit. Our ties to land and animals help us survive and connect to our ancestors. We are all connected.”

New! Click here to see all the NRCS American Indian winning posters from 1991 to date

Choctaw Code Talkers

Legislation signed in October 2008 by President Bush week authorizes Congressional Medals of Honor be issued to the Choctaw Nation and family members of the 14 "Choctaw Code Talkers" from the Army's Thirty-Sixth Division. The "Choctaw Code Talkers" utilized their traditional Muskogean language/delivery methods to strategically hasten the end of World War l, defeat well seasoned German forces, and save numerous American and Ally troops in the Meuse-Argonne Campaign.

All of these men were serving in the same battalion, which was practically surrounded by the German Army. And, to make matters worse, it was common knowledge that the Germans had 'broken' the American radio codes and had tapped the telephone lines. The Germans were also capturing about one out of every four messengers sent out as runners between the various companies on the battle line.

The German code experts were unable to decipher this ancient Muskogean language that evolved in the SE region of North America and had also proved to be an important trade language in southern United States history and prehistory. Within 72 hours after the Choctaw language was pressed into service, the tide of battle had turned, and in less than 72 hours, the German Army was retreating and the Allied Forces were on full attack. Since this occurred at the close of the war, the Choctaw Code Talkers were apparently used in only this one campaign. The men were praised by their company commanders and the battalion commander thought these men were promised medals for their contributions to end the war, but they had never been received.........until now.

Choctaw citizen recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor include: Albert Billy, Mitchell Bobb, Victor Brown, Ben Caterby, James Edwards, Tobias Frazer, Ben Hampton, Solomon Louis, Pete Maytubby, Jeff Nelson, Joseph Oklahombi, Robert Taylor, Calvin Wilson, and Walter Veach.

Navajo Code Talkers

Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleliu, Iwo Jima: the Navajo code talkers took part in every assault the U.S. Marines conducted in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945. They served in all six Marine divisions, Marine Raider battalions and Marine parachute units, transmitting messages by telephone and radio in their native language -- a code that the Japanese never broke.

The idea to use Navajo for secure communications came from Philip Johnston, the son of a missionary to the Navajos and one of the few non-Navajos who spoke their language fluently. Johnston, reared on the Navajo reservation, was a World War I veteran who knew of the military's search for a code that would withstand all attempts to decipher it. He also knew that Native American languages--notably Choctaw--had been used in World War I to encode messages.

Johnston believed Navajo answered the military requirement for an undecipherable code because Navajo is an unwritten language of extreme complexity. Its syntax and tonal qualities, not to mention dialects, make it unintelligible to anyone without extensive exposure and training. It has no alphabet or symbols, and is spoken only on the Navajo lands of the American Southwest. One estimate indicates that less than 30 non-Navajos, none of them Japanese, could understand the language at the outbreak of World War II.

Early in 1942, Johnston met with Major General Clayton B. Vogel, the commanding general of Amphibious Corps, Pacific Fleet, and his staff to convince them of the Navajo language's value as code. Johnston staged tests under simulated combat conditions, demonstrating that Navajos could encode, transmit, and decode a three-line English message in 20 seconds. Machines of the time required 30 minutes to perform the same job. Convinced, Vogel recommended to the Commandant of the Marine Corps that the Marines recruit 200 Navajos.

In May 1942, the first 29 Navajo recruits attended boot camp. Then, at Camp Pendleton, Oceanside, California, this first group created the Navajo code. They developed a dictionary and numerous words for military terms. The dictionary and all code words had to be memorized during training.

Once a Navajo code talker completed his training, he was sent to a Marine unit deployed in the Pacific theater. The code talkers' primary job was to talk, transmitting information on tactics and troop movements, orders and other vital battlefield communications over telephones and radios. They also acted as messengers, and performed general Marine duties.

Praise for their skill, speed and accuracy accrued throughout the war. At Iwo Jima, Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division signal officer, declared, "Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima." Connor had six Navajo code talkers working around the clock during the first two days of the battle. Those six sent and received over 800 messages, all without error.

The Japanese, who were skilled code breakers, remained baffled by the Navajo language. The Japanese chief of intelligence, Lieutenant General Seizo Arisue, said that while they were able to decipher the codes used by the U.S. Army and Army Air Corps, they never cracked the code used by the Marines. The Navajo code talkers even stymied a Navajo soldier taken prisoner at Bataan. (About 20 Navajos served in the U.S. Army in the Philippines.) The Navajo soldier, forced to listen to the jumbled words of talker transmissions, said to a code talker after the war, "I never figured out what you guys who got me into all that trouble were saying."

Navajo remained potentially valuable as code even after the war. For that reason, the code talkers, whose skill and courage saved both American lives and military engagements, only recently earned recognition from the Government and the public.

Department of Defense Honors Navajo Veterans

Long unrecognized because of the continued value of their language as a security classified code, the Navajo code talkers of World War II were honored for their contributions to defense on Sept. 17, 1992, at the Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
Thirty-five code talkers, all veterans of the U.S. Marine Corps, attended the dedication of the Navajo code talker exhibit. The exhibit includes a display of photographs, equipment and the original code, along with an explanation of how the code worked.
Dedication ceremonies included speeches by the then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald Atwood, U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona and Navajo President Peterson Zah. The Navajo veterans and their families traveled to the ceremony from their homes on the Navajo Reservation, which includes parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7173899931450874426#

American Indian/Alaskan Native Emphasis Program Newsletters

The documents listed below require Adobe Acrobat.

Fall 2009 Newsletter Vol. 2, No. 2 (PDF; 1.0 MB)

March 2009 Newsletter Vol. 2, No. 1 (PDF; 1.0 MB)

Fall 2008 Newsletter Vol. 1, No. 2 (PDF; 1.1 MB)

March 2008 Newsletter Vol. 1, No. 1 (PDF; 3.0 MB)

New! "Tribute to Edward S. Cutis" Slideshow

This slideshow presents some of the photographs taken by Edward S. Curtis who devoted 30 years to photographing and documenting over eighty Indian tribes, west of the Mississippi, from the Mexican border to northern Alaska. His project won support from such prominent and powerful figures as President Theodore Roosevelt and J. Pierpont Morgan.
His work, “The North American Indian”, was completed in 1930 and consisted of 20 leather bound volumes, each containing 75 hand-pressed photogravures and 300 pages of text. Each volume was accompanied by a corresponding portfolio containing at least 36 photogravures.

The following document requires Acrobat Reader.

Indians of the Past: "Tribute to Edward S. Curtis" (PDF; 2.1 MB)

New! American Indian Heroes

The following documents require Acrobat Reader.

John B. Herrington (1958-) (PDF; 68 KB)

Jim Thorpe (1887-1953) (PDF; 55 KB)

Sitting Bull (1831-1890) (PDF; 82 KB)

A Cherokee Story

An elder Cherokee chief took his grandchildren into the forest and sat them down and said to them, “A fight is going on inside me. This is a terrible fight and it is a fight between two wolves. One wolf is the wolf of fear, anger, arrogance and greed. The other wolf is the wolf of courage, kindness, humility and love.”
The children were very quiet and listening to their grandfather with both their ears. He then said to them, “This same fight between the two wolves that is going on inside of me is going on inside of you, and inside every person.”
They thought about it for a minute and then one child asked the chief, “Grandfather, which wolf will win the fight?” He said quietly, “The one you feed.”